The She-Wolf

by Maurice Druon

  ‘You see, Messire Count,’ Pope John had said to Bouville, a few days earlier, at the first audience he had granted him, speaking in that hoarsely whispering voice with which he controlled Christendom in such a masterful way, ‘you see, Messire Count, one must govern with one’s friends and against one’s enemies. Princes who spend their time and their strength trying to win over their adversaries create only discontent among their true supporters while acquiring false friends, who are always ready to betray them.’

  To be convinced of the Pope’s intention to remain in France, it was necessary only to look at the castle he had built by incorporating the old Bishop’s Palace and which now dominated the town with its towers, battlements and machicolations. The interior was divided into spacious cloisters, reception rooms, and splendidly decorated apartments under blue ceilings strewn with stars like the sky.23 There were two ushers on the first door, two on the second, five on the third, and fourteen for the other doors. The Palace Marshal had under his orders forty couriers and sixty-three sergeants-at-arms. This was no temporary establishment.

  And to discover with whom Pope John intended ruling, Bouville had merely to look at the dignitaries who came to take their places at the long table gleaming with gold and silver plate in the banqueting-hall, which was hung with silk tapestries.

  The Cardinal-Archbishop of Avignon was called Arnaud de Via; he was the son of a sister of the Pope. The Cardinal-Chancellor of the Roman Church, that is to say the Prime Minister of Christendom, a tall, stout man, who looked well in his purple, was Gaucelin Duèze, the son of Pierre Duèze, that brother of the Pope whom King Philippe V had ennobled. And then there were a nephew of the Pope, Cardinal de la Motte-Fressange, and a cousin of the Pope, Cardinal Raymond Le Roux. Another nephew of the Pope, Pierre de Vicy, controlled the papal household and its expenses, and was in charge of the two stewards, the four cellarers, the masters of the stables and the farriery, the six grooms of the chamber, the thirty chaplains, the sixteen confessors for visiting pilgrims, the bellringers, the sweepers, the water-carriers, the laundresses, the physicians, the apothecaries and the barbers.

  Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget was certainly not the least of the personages present at the papal table. He was the perambulating Papal Legate in Italy, and it was whispered of him – but of whom were things not whispered here? – that he was a natural son Jacques Duèze had had when, so far from thinking he would ever become pope, he was not yet a prelate, chancellor to the King of Naples, nor even a doctor or a cleric, and had not indeed thought of leaving his native Cahors, though already past his fortieth year!

  All Pope John’s relations, down to cousins once removed, were lodged in his palace and shared his repasts; two of them even lived in the private entresol underneath the dining-room. They had all been given posts among the hundred noble knights, one as the Dispenser of Charity, another as Master of the Apostolic Chamber, who administered all the ecclesiastical income, the annates, tithes, subsidies, death duties and taxes from the Sacred Penitential. The Court consisted of more than four hundred persons and its annual expenses amounted to over four thousand florins.

  When, eight years earlier, the Conclave at Lyons had raised to the throne of Saint Peter an exhausted and fragile old man, who, so it was expected and indeed hoped, would give up the ghost the following week, the papal treasury had been empty. But during these eight years, this little old man, who looked like a feather blown by the wind, had administered so well the Church’s finances, had taxed so successfully the adulterers, the sodomites and the incestuous, the thieves and the criminals, the bad priests and the bishops guilty of violence, had sold abbeys for such good prices and had so cleverly organized all the resources of ecclesiastical property, that he had been able to build a town and acquire the greatest income in the world. He might well afford to feed his family and govern through it. Nor was he niggardly with charity to the poor and gifts to the rich. He presented his visitors with jewels and holy medals of gold, which were furnished by his usual supplier, the Jew Boncœur.

  Buried, rather than seated, in an armchair with an immensely high back, his feet resting on two thick cushions covered with gold silk, Pope John presided over his long table, which had something of the dual quality of a consistory and a family dinner-party. Bouville, sitting on his right, watched him with fascination. How the Holy Father had changed since his election! Not in physical appearance: time no longer had power to alter that thin, pointed face, so wrinkled and mobile, its head covered with a fur-edged skull-cap, its eyes small and mouse-like, lacking both eyelashes and eyebrows, and its extraordinarily little mouth, whose upper lip tended to disappear behind a toothless gum. John XXII carried his eighty years more easily than many people their fifty; his hands were proof of it: smooth and the skin hardly parchmenty, the joints were still perfectly flexible. It was rather in his whole demeanour, in his tone of voice and conversation, that the transformation had taken place. This man, who had originally owed his cardinal’s hat to forging a royal signature, and his tiara to two years of secret intrigue, to electoral corruption, and to a month’s simulation of incurable disease, seemed to have acquired a new personality through the mere aura of the supreme pontificate. Having started with almost nothing at all and having reached the summit of human ambitions with nothing more to desire or obtain for himself personally, all the strength and redoubtable mental machinery that had elevated him to his present position could now be employed, in complete detachment, for the sole good of the Church such as he conceived it to be. And what energy he expended! How many there were among those who had elected him, thinking he was on the point of death or would allow the Curia to govern in his name, who repented it now! John XXII led them a hard life. Indeed, this little man was a great sovereign of the Church.

  He dealt with everything, decided everything. He had not hesitated in the previous March to excommunicate the Emperor of Germany, Ludwig of Bavaria, and, at the same time, to remove him from his throne and thereby open the succession to the Holy Roman Empire about which the King of France and the Count of Valois were so concerned. He intervened in all the differences between the princes of Christendom, reminding them, as was consonant with his mission as universal pastor, of their duty to keep the peace. He had recently been considering the war in Aquitaine and had settled, during the audiences he had given Bouville, the course he intended to pursue.

  The sovereigns of France and England would be asked to prolong the truce signed by the Earl of Kent at La Réole, which was due to expire in this very month of December. Monseigneur of Valois would make no use of the four hundred men-at-arms and the thousand cross-bowmen King Charles IV had recently sent to him at Bergerac as reinforcements. But King Edward would be urgently invited to come and render homage to the King of France with the least possible delay. The two sovereigns would free the Gascon lords they were respectively detaining and would show them no severity for having taken the enemy’s part. Finally, the Pope intended writing to Queen Isabella to adjure her to do all she could to re-establish good relations between her husband and her brother. Pope John had no more illusions than had Bouville as to the unhappy Queen’s influence. But the mere fact of the Holy Father writing to her was bound to restore her credit to some extent and might make her enemies hesitate to ill-treat her further. And then John XXII would suggest her coming to Paris on a mission of conciliation, there to preside over the drawing up of a treaty which would leave England only a small coastal strip of the Duchy of Aquitaine which would include Saintes, Bordeaux, Dax and Bayonne. Thus the political ambitions of the Count of Valois, the machinations of Robert of Artois and the secret wishes of Roger Mortimer were to receive from the Holy Father a significant impulse towards their accomplishment.

  Bouville, having thus fulfilled the first part of his mission with success, could devote himself to the richly and delectably spiced stewed eels with which his silver bowl had been filled.

  ‘We get our eels from the Lake of Martigues,’ Pope John remarked to
Bouville. ‘Do you like them?’

  Fat Bouville’s mouth was so full that he could reply only by assuming an expression of delighted astonishment.

  The papal cuisine was luxurious, and even the Friday menus were rare feasts. Fresh tunny fish, Norwegian cod, lampreys and sturgeons, prepared in twenty different ways and accompanied by twenty different sauces, succeeded each other in dish after gleaming dish. The wine of Arbois flowed like gold into the goblets. The growths of Burgundy, the Lot or the Rhône accompanied the cheeses.

  For his part, the Holy Father contented himself with nibbling with his gums at a spoonful of pike pâté and sipping at a goblet of milk. He had taken it into his head that the Pope should eat nothing but white food.

  Bouville had been charged by Monseigneur of Valois to deal with another problem, and a more delicate one: the matter of the crusade, which seemed to have fallen somewhat into the background, for John XXII had said no word about it during their interviews. He had, nevertheless, to make up his mind to broach it. It is a rule that ambassadors should never approach thorny questions direct; and Bouville believed he was being subtle when he said: ‘Most Holy Father, the Court of France noted with much interest the Council of Valladolid, held two years ago by your Legate, at which it was decreed that priests must give up their concubines …’

  ‘Under pain, if they did not do so,’ said Pope John in his rapid, whispering voice, ‘of being deprived after two months of a third part of the yield of their benefices, and two months later of another third, and two months after that to be deprived of it all. Indeed, Messire Count, men are sinners even if they be priests, and we know very well that we shall not succeed in suppressing all sin. But at least those who are obstinate in wrongdoing will fill our coffers, and the money can be put to good use. And many will avoid making their scandals public.’

  ‘And so bishops will cease attending in person the christenings and weddings of their illegitimate children, as they are all too inclined to do.’

  Having said this, Bouville suddenly blushed. It was perhaps not very tactful to talk of illegitimate children in the presence of the Cardinal du Pouget. He had been tactless, very tactless. But no one appeared to have noticed it. So Bouville hurried on: ‘But, Holy Father, on what grounds is a more severe punishment decreed for priests whose concubines are not Christian?’

  ‘The reason is a perfectly simple one, Messire Count,’ replied Pope John. ‘The decree is aimed at Spain where there are many Moors and where priests find it only too easy to acquire mistresses, for there is nothing to keep them from fornicating with the tonsured.’

  He turned slightly in his great chair and his thin lips parted in a brief smile. He had quickly understood to what the other was leading up by turning the conversation to the Moors. And now he waited, at once mistrustful and amused, while Messire de Bouville drank a draught of wine to give himself courage and assumed an expression of unconcern before saying: ‘It is clear, most Holy Father, that the Council made wise decisions which will be of the greatest use to us during the crusade. For we shall have many priests and chaplains in our armies when they advance into Moorish territory; it would be most unfortunate if they set an example of misconduct.’

  Bouville breathed more easily, the word ‘crusade’ had been uttered.

  Pope John screwed up his eyes and joined the tips of his fingers together.

  ‘It would be equally unfortunate,’ he replied calmly, ‘if a similar licence should proliferate among the Christian nations while their armies are busy overseas. For it is a well-known fact, Messire Count, that when the armies are fighting in distant lands, and the most valiant combatants have been drained from the peoples, every sort of vice flourishes in the kingdoms as if, their strength being far away, the respect due to the laws of God had departed with it. Wars are always great occasions of sin. Is Monseigneur of Valois still as determined as ever on this crusade with which he wishes to honour our pontificate?’

  ‘Well, most Holy Father, the emissaries from Lesser Armenia …’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Pope John, tapping his little fingers together. ‘It was I who sent the emissaries to Monseigneur of Valois.’

  ‘We hear from all sources that the Moors on the coasts …’

  ‘I know. I get the same reports as Monseigneur of Valois.’

  All conversation had ceased at the great table. Bishop Pierre de Mortemart, who was accompanying Bouville on his mission, and who it was said would be made a cardinal at the next preferment, was listening, as were all the nephews and cousins, the prelates and dignitaries. The spoons scraped the plates as silently as if they were of velvet. The Pope’s whisper, so singularly assured yet so lacking in tone, was difficult to catch, and one needed to be very accustomed to it to do so at any distance.

  ‘Monseigneur of Valois, for whom I have a most paternal affection, has persuaded us to consent to the tithe; but until now this tithe has been used by him merely for the purposes of acquiring Aquitaine and supporting his candidature to the Holy Roman Empire. These are most noble enterprises, but they cannot be termed crusades. I am not at all sure that I shall consent to renew the tithe next year, and still less, Messire Count, that I shall agree to the supplementary subsidies that are being asked of me for the expedition.’

  Bouville took the blow hard. If that was all he could report on his return to Paris, Charles of Valois would be very angry indeed.

  ‘Most Holy Father,’ he replied as coldly as he could, ‘both the Count of Valois and King Charles imagined that you were sensible of the honour Christendom would derive …’

  ‘The honour of Christendom, my dear son, consists in living at peace,’ interrupted the Pope, lightly tapping Bouville’s hand.

  How the Holy Father had changed. In the old days he had always allowed people to finish their remarks, even if he had understood what they were driving at from the first word they uttered. Now he interrupted; he was too busy to wait for matters he already knew about to be explained to him. But Bouville, who had prepared his plan of attack, went on: ‘Is it not our duty to bring the Infidel to the true Faith and to go to fight heresy among them?’

  ‘Heresy? Heresy, Bouville?’ replied Pope John in an indignant whisper. ‘Let our first care be to extirpate the heresy flourishing among our own peoples and be less anxious to go and lance the abscess on the face of our neighbour when leprosy is corroding our own. Heresy is my business, and I think I understand well enough how to chastise it. My tribunals are functioning, and I need the help of all my priests, as indeed I do that of all the princes of Christendom, to track it down. If the chivalry of Europe takes the road to the Orient, the Devil will have a free hand in France, Spain and Italy! For how long now have the Cathari, the Albigenses and the Spirituels been quiet? Why have I split up the big diocese of Toulouse, which was their haunt, and created sixteen new bishoprics in the Languedoc? And the pastoureaux, whose bands came even as far as this but a few years ago, were they not incited by heresy? Such ills cannot be extirpated in a single generation. You have to await the sons of the grandsons to have done with it.’

  All the prelates present could bear witness to the severity with which John XXII persecuted heresy. If they were commanded to be easy on the minor sins of human nature, out of consideration for the finances, the faggots on the other hand flamed high when it was a question of spiritual error. Indeed, the whole of Christendom was repeating the words of the monk Bernard Délicieux, a Franciscan, who had attacked the Dominican Inquisition and had even had the audacity to come to preach in Avignon itself, which had earned him imprisonment for life. ‘Even Saint Peter and Saint Paul themselves,’ he had said, ‘could not prove their innocence of heresy, if they returned to this world and were accused by the Inquisitors.’

  But, at the same time, the Holy Father could not help advocating certain strange ideas, the offspring of his lively intelligence, which, emitted from the summit of the pontifical throne, created a considerable stir among the doctors of the theological faculties. He
had, for instance, pronounced against the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, which was not of course a dogma, but of which the principle was generally admitted. The most he would concede was that the Lord had purified the Virgin before her birth, but at a moment which, so he declared, was difficult to determine precisely. On the other hand, he would admit of no doubt concerning her Assumption. Moreover, John XXII did not believe in the Beatific Vision, in any case until the day of the Last Judgment, and thereby denied there could, as yet, be a single soul in Paradise or, consequently, in Hell.

  For many theologians such theses exhaled at least the ghost of an odour of sulphur. But, sitting at this very table, was a tall Cistercian named Jacques Fournier, the son of a baker of Foix, in Ariège, one-time Abbot of Fontfroide and Bishop of Pamiers, who was known as ‘the White Cardinal’ because of the colour of his habit, and who, singled out by the Pope to become his closest confidant, employed all the resources of his talent for apologetics to support and justify the Holy Father’s more daring propositions.24

  The Pope went on: ‘Don’t worry too much, Messire Count, about the heresy of the Moors. Protect our coasts against their ships by all means, but leave them to the Judgment of Almighty God, for, after all, they too are His creatures and, no doubt, He has some design concerning them. Can any of us know what fate is in store for souls that have never been touched by the Grace of the Revelation?’

  ‘I presume they go to Hell,’ said Bouville ingenuously.

  ‘Hell, Hell,’ the frail Pope whispered, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Do not talk of things concerning which you know nothing. Moreover, don’t tell me – for we’re much too old friends, Bouville – that it is for the salvation of the Infidel Monseigneur of Valois is asking for twelve hundred thousand livres of subsidy from my treasury, of which three hundred thousand are for himself. In any case, I very well know that the Count of Valois no longer has any great enthusiasm for his crusade.’